The November issue of the LEGO Star Wars magazine has been awaited by many fans with a mixture of child-like giddiness and at the same time almost unhealthy obsessiveness. the reason? Of course the minifigure! So lets see what the fuss is all about.
As someone who doesn’t proactively collect minifigs I’m always half surprised, half glad that this insanity passes me by. I may occasionally get lucky and have a rare figure from a set whose value I only find out after the fact, but otherwise I don’t care much. One thing I did notice, however, is that the Betrayal at Cloud City (75222) was quite rubbish, yet contained a bunch of the little dudes and dudettes that people were keen on. One of them is what people simply call “Bespin Luke”, a.k.a. a slightly beaten up Luke Skywalker ready to face off with Darth Vader. As you might have guessed, the combination of a shitty, but expensive set and few people actually buying it made this figure a scarce and costly, yet highly coveted thing.
Now suddenly none of this matters anymore, as indeed the exact same minifigure is what you get with the magazine. A move to screw over collectors who had previously bought it for a lot of money? Likely not, as the figure is also included in the exclusive Bespin Duel (75294) set specifically made for Star Wars Celebration. After that went only virtual due to this year’s pandemic, said package was shortly available through Amazon US only. That caused a lot of people from other regions to go into a frenzy to at least re-brick this set if they couldn’t import an original one from the limited edition (good luck with sourcing the grey fork, though).
See how everything comes full circle? Clearly LEGO have recently producing a ton of those little Lukes. To some this will be tragic, devaluing their collection, for others, and I dare say the majority of fans, this is and extremely lucky thing. Of course inevitably some people have already been overdoing it, buying up whole stacks of the magazine and hoarding it, but that’s part of the insanity. In any case the figure is done well enough and even I was surprised how much of a difference it makes among the other versions I have with blond hair and white clothes.
The rest of the magazine doesn’t offer anything extraordinary, though. The Han-Solo-centric comic is okay, but otherwise this is one of those issues that feel oddly “light” in the content department. the puzzles are ridiculously simple and they kinda ruined the one poster that would have been acceptable, the one with the Mandalorian and The Child, with too fat and ugly type work. So really not much to see and it’s indeed all about the minifigure, after all…
Mylenium's Brick Corner 